


Bell's Monster

by Sinter



Category: The Nesting Place - Emily Carroll
Genre: Creepy, Gen, Horror, even monsters have their own monsters, house in the woods, possibly body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-09 14:31:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10414290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinter/pseuds/Sinter
Summary: Bell's mother told her about monsters, but she always took it with a grain of salt.





	

**Author's Note:**

> "The Nesting Place" belongs to Emily Carroll, not me, though I have borrowed much of the dialogue verbatim.
> 
> Beta'd by my brother, who is patient when I jump him at odd hours of the night and dump things on him. He's not surprised that my solution to monsters is "have something eat them."

Bell’s mother told her about monsters.

 

Her mother held her in her lap and told her of the man-shaped thing that lurked in the cellar of her childhood home.  How its bone-white face with its piano key teeth and burnt-out eyes, would peer up from the bottom of the steps. 

 

_“Mmmm…  Little ones…  Little ones…”_ it would call through the floorboards, warbling and thin.

 

“The adults never heard a sound though, and never believed us when we spike of the creatures sweet, wet voice,” Bell’s mother said, eyes shadowed.

 

She spoke of the dark fog that seeped over their town years ago… and of the thousand mouths it hid.  Rings of teeth that glinted at the edge of one’s vision. 

 

“The last time I saw your father he was reaching for me, half swallowed in that mist…” she told Bell once, carding her hand through Bell’s bobbed hair.

 

But the worst kind of monster was the burrowing kind.  The sort that crawled into you and made a home there.  The sort you couldn’t name, the sort you couldn’t see.  The monster that ate you alive from the inside out.

 

Bell always took her mother with a grain of salt.

 

_Her_ monster, after all, might have crawled into her and made a home there, just like her mother said, but it lived mostly in her lame right leg.  Its hunger banked to dull embers glimmering faintly under their blanket of ashes, curling quietly on the edges of her awareness.  The impression of needle teeth and mirror-sharp claws held carefully away from fragile skin.

 

Bell’s monster, she believed.  It tasted the air when she breathed and whispered to her what they smelled together, what each scent meant.  It taught her how to see behind the masks people wear and what their hearts whispered underneath their words. 

 

***

 

Bell’s monster was the one who told her what it meant when she noticed sickly sweetness tingeing the edges of her mother’s scent when she came home from boarding school. 

 

“Are you okay?”  Bell asked when her mother caught herself against the table by Bell’s cane.

 

“I’m fine, dear,” her mother smiled (worried), breath short.  “Just a long day.”

 

_“Lies, but well-meant,”_ Bell’s monster muttered, wet-stone disgust edging its words.  _“She is not well, and unlikely to_ get _well.  She’s been lonely for a long time now, half her heart already dead and gone.”_  

 

Bell brought her mother a cup of tea.

 

***

 

Bell’s brother Clarence picked her up the next break, smelling of a lady’s perfume.  “No, no, the medicine will help and she’ll be well by summer, Mabel.”  Clarence enthused with single-minded optimism the next time she was home.  “We’ll pack her up and she can visit my fiancé.  Rebecca’s got a beautiful big place in the country, just the thing to cheer everyone up.”  He waved his arms expansively and the two of them got their first good lungful of his fiancé’s scent.

 

Bell froze when her monster perked like a dog sighting a rabbit.  The floral perfume cloaked a fleshy, wormy scent, touched with vellum and edged with the hard-copper scent of uncooked liver.  Her monster’s hunger flared for a heartbeat, diamond-sharp and honed as bone.  _“Yes,”_ it crooned, voice layering upon itself as if from many throats.  _“Yes, this will do.  This will do very nicely.”_   Its stalking anticipation slipped like oil down her spine.

 

Bell rubbed at her leg and smiled blandly (calculatingly) back.

 

***

 

Bell closed the sickroom door behind her.  It clicked softly on her mother’s sleeping form, thinner than before.

 

Bell’s monster hummed and flicked the edges of itself a time or two, as Bell might drum her fingers.  _“She is dying, and will soon be gone,”_ Bell’s monster whispered to her, the sickly sweetness overtaking her mother’s scent on their tongue.  _“She looks forward to it.”_   Its coils tightened about her for a moment and she flexed back against its dark-sharp presence.  Bell though of her mother’s story of dark fog and rings of teeth.   They turned away and went back to Bell’s winter homework. 

 

***

 

Bell had expected the call that summoned her to the office.  She went quietly, dutifully.  _“Good girl.  You knew as well as I that this was coming,”_ her monster hummed.  She sat in dour silence while the secretary fussed over her and the headmaster smiled consolingly (pityingly) at her and asked to get back to class.

 

Bell’s classmates smiled bright (fake) smiles while their eyes glittered flint-sharp.  They spoke sweet words but Bell caught the whispers that eddied from clique to clique with mocking laughter.  Her monster writhed and hissed.

 

Bell’s teacher smiled genial (disinterested) smiles and Bell smiled tightly back.  She caught the flashes of disgust when he glanced at the brace on her leg.  Her monster’s voice creaked like old leather in the chambers of her skull.

 

Bell kept to herself.  

 

***

 

“THERE SHE IS!” Clarence’ voice blared out.  Her brother bounded towards her like an oversized puppy, heedlessly exuberant. 

 

Bell let his chatter wash over her with a word or two as she and her monster took in lungfuls of his scent.  It was a different floral perfume this time, but the scent underneath was the same.

 

_“Prey, yes,”_ her monster breathed against her ribs.  _“We’re hunting now.”_  

 

Bell hummed consideringly as she heaved her carpet bag into Clarence’s car. 

 

***

 

The house belonging to Clarence’s fiancé was a stately country manor, neatly painted and rigorously up kept.  It presided like a stately matron over its lawns, which spread like a moat before the surrounding forest.

 

A figure emerged, grey from her pinned hair to her sensible shoes, weathered like wood. 

 

Clarence waved.  “Madame Beauchamp!  Meet my sister Mabel!”  Bell trailed after him, cane and shoes crunching up the drive.

 

“Welcome, Mabel, welcome.  I’ve just started dinner, come inside,” the stern old lady greeted her.

 

_“What’s this?”_   Bell’s monster paused, then shivered all-over, like a swarm of beady black eyes blinking open.  _“There are more of them; she’s had little ones.”_   Hungry delight prickled like goosebumps along her limbs, ignoring the bantering before her as she looked up at estate before her. 

 

Clarence shooed her off as he made to follow Madame Beauchamp.  “I’ll be a moment!  Just leave your things there for now!”  He grinned, teeth toothpaste-white.  “I’ll bring them upstairs later.  Make yourself comfortable!”

 

Alone, Bell and her monster wandered through the house, peaking through doors and tasting the air.  _“No, not here, not here,”_ her monster grumbled, swirling like crunching gravel and damp-rotted wood beneath her skin.  _“Where did she leave the little ones, so tasty and sweet?”_  

 

“She’ll come.  And then she’ll lead us to them,” Bell murmured back, closing the door to the cellar.  They wandered back to the library.  They slipped a book from the shelves and curled up on the settee, settling in to wait.

 

***

 

A light, sweet voice roused Bell and her monster from their book.  “He did mention you were a reader,” the woman said.  She wore fashionable blue skirt and looked more like the _idea_ of a woman than a real, flesh-and-blood person with all their imperfections.  “Your brother, that is.  It is so good to finally meet you.  When Clarence told me that he had a little sister, I told him she must visit straightaway.  I’m Rebecca.  You must be Mabel.”  Her smile narrowed her slanted eyes.

 

Bell and her monster looked up and smiled with all their teeth.  “Bell, actually.  I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”  Bell’s monster’s hunger tugged at the pit of her stomach, red and black and yawning, the lily-of-the-valley perfume entirely failing to mask the scent of prey. 

 

Rebecca smiled, claiming Bell’s hand.  “Ah, Belle!  As in ‘Belle et la Bete,’ hmm?”

 

“No- as in ‘it tolls for thee,’” Bell managed against the swirl of velvet-steel hunger along her bones.  The hand holding hers was vellum-smooth, bonelessly graceful.  Her leg itched beneath its brace. 

 

***

 

Heading out from their guest room after lunch, Bell and her monster paused.  A skritching, sclorching sound drifted faintly past the closed door at the end of the hall.  Bell’s hand tightened around the head of her cane and her monster pricked to attention.

 

A breathy rasp, “Rebecca… it’s not working…”

 

_Sskklchsss  Ssklchss_

 

“Quiet.”  Implacable and firm. 

 

_Sskklchssss_

 

“W-wait…  Tonight, try again tonight…” the first voice wavered, panting.

 

_Sshhhkkccttt  Shhchkks  Sklsschsss…_   The rasping-wet sounds trailed off.  Bell and her monster backed carefully away down the hall, slow to keep their cane and brace quiet. 

 

_“Skins, probably,”_ was her monster’s verdict. 

 

***

 

Dinner that night had candles and placemats.  The gold edging the china gleamed bright as the silverware.  Madame Beauchamp bustled in the background, serving fresh dishes and removing the old ones. 

 

Clarence monopolized the conversation.  He waxed eloquent about Rebecca and life and their plans for the future, hands gesturing expansively. 

 

Bell let him.  She and her monster watched Rebecca eat.  Rebecca smiled demurely and her manners were impeccable, but her teeth clattered softly against her fork every bite.  They seemed almost to wiggle, like they weren’t anchored right. 

 

_“They aren’t,”_ her monster whispered, like the crinkling of a shed snakeskin.  _“They’re more camouflage  than anything.  To hide that there’s no longer anything human to root them_ to _.  Not like us.”_  

 

Across the table, Clarence expounded on about his and Rebecca’s plans to move to the city, it would be such a nice change of pace, wouldn’t it?  Mabel could visit them all the time! 

 

Madame Beauchamp reached in front of Bell to take an empty tureen of soup.  Her movement wafted the bright tang of fresh, human blood towards them.  Madame Beauchamp’s sleeve rode up her wrist when she stretched and Bell and her monster caught a glimpse of dozens of tiny, bare sores, still fresh and raw.  Her eyes were pink and shadowed.

 

_“She tried on that one’s skin, didn’t she.”_   It wasn’t a question.  _“Too old to stretch well, especially for young ones to wear.  No room to grow, no space for youthful mistakes.  They must be getting big now.”_   Bell’s monster rippled in thoughtful calculation up and down her flanks.

 

Bell hummed in the back of her throat.  She swallowed firmly and took another helping.

 

***

 

Late that night, edgy from wisps of her monster’s hunger, a gleam of light out her window roused Bell from her doze.  A dark figure with a lantern slipped into the woods. 

 

Her monster writhed about and settled like a shroud under her skin.  _“There we go,”_ it crooned.  “ _We’ll follow her scent-trail tomorrow night, back to her nest.  Snap them up and lie in wait for when she comes to visit.”_  

 

Bell smiled with her monster, watching the still woods one long minute more.  Tomorrow night they would hunt.  

 

***

 

Bell and her monster spent the next morning under a tree with a book from the library, waiting for nightfall.  The sun was bright and birds called from the woods. 

 

A shadow loomed over Bell.  “Don’t.”  Madame Beauchamp said, gazing down at her.  Her jacket today was just as grey as her blouse yesterday. 

 

Bell blinked with her monster.  “I’m sorry?  Wh-“

 

“The woods,” Madame Beauchamp spoke over her.  “Don’t go off exploring them on your own.  It’s very easy to lose one’s way in there…especially for someone unfamiliar with the area.  Or worse, you could find yourself alone, trapped…like Rebecca did.  She wasn’t much older than you.  Never listened to her parents, God rest their souls…  She wandered into those woods one morning…and vanished.”  Madame Beauchamp’s words were chopped, abrupt, like a carrot on her cutting board. 

 

“We found her three days later, at the bottom of a cave.  She’d fallen and been unable to climb out.  Three days all alone in the dark…drinking water out of a fetid pool to stay alive.  All alone.”  Madame Beauchamp stared down at Bell, dour and stern. 

 

“So don’t,” she finished.  “Lunch will be in half an hour.”  Suddenly prosaic again, Madame Beauchamp turned away and strode back to the house.

 

Bell and her monster watched her leave, book forgotten in their lap. 

 

_“And the Rebecca that came back wasn’t Rebecca anymore,”_ Bell’s monster concluded, laughter like clattering stones. 

 

***

 

That night, after the lights had been put out and even Madame Beauchamp had found her bed, Bell and her monster slipped out.  They took the lantern they’d found in a tool shed that afternoon and ghosted across the lawn to where they’d seen Rebecca enter the woods last night. 

 

Bell breathed deep, rolling the air along her tongue.  Rebecca’s scent of perfume and worms, dry skin and liver, teased at her nose, fresher scent over layers of past midnight travels.  Her monster nudged at her and they went on.

 

***

 

The trail led to a cave, footprints visible in the dirt by its mouth, winding away underground.  Past the mouth, Bell and her monster paused, tasting the air again.  More wormy scents drifted from somewhere ahead, reminding Bell of the time she found a nest of white grubs beneath a rotted log.

 

_“They’re up ahead; not too far now,”_ her monster’s voice slid under her skin, which twitched as her monster stirred.  _“You can smell it, too.”_  

 

The corners of Bell’s lips twitched up.  “Yes,” she murmured back.

 

One last bend opened up into a chamber toothy with stalagmites and stalactites.  The scent they’d followed hung in the air and a small pool flashed in their lantern light.

 

Bell set her lantern carefully to the side and approached the pool.  Slim, wormy red tendrils stirred at her footsteps, gathering at the edge and waving into the air with a thin, skritching, hissing keen.  “Hey there,” she said, crouching down.  “How about you meet my friend?”

 

***

 

Bell’s monster slithered back to her, leaving an empty pool behind.  _“Sweet, so tender and sweet, but hardly very substantial yet.”_

 

“That’s why we’re waiting for Rebecca, though, isn’t it?” Bell asked lightly.  She picked up the lantern as her monster rumbled in absent agreement, settling back slowly.  She picked her way across the chamber to a convenient cluster of stalagmites and checked the view from behind them.  “They were young and small, but their mother will make a far larger meal.”

 

Satisfied with her hiding place, she snuffed her lantern and settled in to wait.

 

***

 

A dim glow wavered and grew from the tunnel’s mouth.  Rebecca’s shoes tapped across the stone.  “My children!  Mummy’s here!” Rebecca’s voice rang out, sweet and fond.  “I’ve been looking for a new home for you, so you’ll be closer to mummy!  Madame Beauchamp’s wasn’t stretchy enough to fit, but Clarence’ sister Bell’s might!”

 

She came into view around the tunnel’s bend, lantern swinging in her hand.  The shadows from the cave formations leapt and ebbed in time with her stride.  “Children?  I can’t hear you!  Are you teasing me?”  She knelt by the pool’s edge.  “Where are you?”

 

Bell and her monster stepped out from behind their stalagmites, between Rebecca and the tunnel’s mouth.  “They’re gone, Rebecca,” Bell said, her monster’s hunger bare as bone under her thoughts.

 

Rebecca whirled about on her knees to face Bell, body stretching bonelessly for a moment.  Wormy red tendrils spewed out of her mouth, some with blunt, questing ends, others tipped with a human tooth that gleamed white root to tip.  More red tendrils held staring eyeballs in place as others writhed out of the stretched-out eye sockets around them and yet more slithered from empty nostrils.  The skin of her face bunched and slid over something that no longer bothered to pretend to be human.

 

“My children!  What did you do to my children!” the thing that wore Rebecca’s skin wailed, a chittering edge to her voice.  Her mouth stretched impossibly wide, letting hundreds of thin tendrils out, Rebecca’s skin bunching up like a stocking pushed down the leg. 

 

_“Your mother wasn’t entirely wrong, you know,”_ Bell’s monster murmured absently, poised to hunt and strike.  _“This one wants your skin, to wear herself or for her children.  She would take your life for her own and hide your bones away with Rebecca’s, forgotten in the dark.”_   Its coils tightened about her briefly.  _“But you were mine first, and I am hungry.”_

 

Bell and her monster smiled, cutting as the sickle moon.  “We ate them,” Bell told the monster before them, “And now we’re going to eat you, too.”

 

***

 

Bell’s monster coiled languorously back under her skin, drowsy with satiation.  She stretched, rubbing absently at her leg as it settled back into place.  Her monster hummed against her bones, hunger replete. 

 

Bell eyed the scattering of human teeth on the ground by the empty skin that had once belonged to a girl named Rebecca, then her lips thinned and she reached for the lantern.

 

***

 

When she left the cave, Bell brought with her a child’s bones, wrapped in a stretched-out skin.


End file.
